Tuesday, July 21, 2015

The Real Reasons Behind the Iran Nuke Deal

Obama is being praised as a man of peace for the nuclear agreement
with Iran. Some are asking if Obama will take the next step and repair
US-Russian relations and bring the Ukrainian imbroglio to an end?

If so he hasn’t told Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland or
his nominee as Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force
General Paul Selva, or his nominee as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, Marine General Joseph Dunford, or his Secretary of the Air Force,
Deborah Lee James.

The other day on Ukrainian TV Victoria Nuland declared that if Russia
does not “fulfill its obligations,” by which she means to turn all of
Ukraine over to Washington including Crimea, a historical Russian
province, “we’re prepared to put more pressure on Russia.” During the
past week both of Obama’s nominees to the top military positions told
the US Senate that Russia was the main threat to the US, an “existential
threat” even. With this level of war rhetoric in play, clearly Obama
has no interest in reducing the tensions that Washington has created
with Russia.

In my last column I wrote that the agreement with Iran does not mean
much, because Washington can renew the sanctions at any time merely by
making false charges against Iran. Obama knows this even if Lindsey
Graham and John McCain pretend that they don’t know it.

The US and its proxies continue to murder people over a large area of
the earth. Clearly Obama is not a man of peace, and neither are his
European enablers and the United Nations. So what is the reason for the
accommodation with Iran after many years of rabid demonization of a
country for no other reason than the country insisted on its rights to
nuclear energy granted by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?

If you can free yourself from the brainwashing from the presstitute
media, three BIG reasons jump out at you. One is that the
neoconservatives’ perception of the threat has shifted from “Muslim
terrorists” to Russia and China. Unlike Muslim terrorists, both Russia
and China are constraints on Washington’s unilateralism. Since the
collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington has grown accustomed to being
the Uni-Power, able to exercise its will unchallenged in the world. The
rise of Russian strength under Putin and Chinese strength under the new
policy has destroyed Washington’s Uni-Power privilege. Washington wants
the privilege back.

Washington is not in good shape, economically or militarily.
According to Nobel Economist Joseph Stieglitz and Harvard University
budget expert Linda Bilmes, Washington has wasted at least $6 trillion
dollars in its 14-year old wars in the Middle East. Despite the
extraordinary cost, Washington has been defeated, and is now faced with
the Islamic State, a new entity arising out of Washington’s mistakes
that is creating a new country partly out of Iraq and partly out of
Syria.

Despite its gigantic hubris, Washington has figured out that the US
cannot simultaneously take on Russia, China, Iran, and the Islamic
State. This realization is one reason for the nuclear agreement with
Iran. It removes Iran from the mix.

A second reason for the agreement is that Iran is opposed to the
Islamic State and can be employed as an American proxy against the
Islamic State, thus freeing Washington for conflict with Russia and
China.

A third reason for Washington’s agreement with Iran is Washington’s
concern with Europe’s energy dependence on Russia. This dependence is
inconsistent with the EU going along with Washington’s sanctions against
Russia and with NATO’s military moves against Russia. Washington wants
to end this dependence and has hopes that money can bring Iran into
becoming a supplier of natural gas and oil to Europe.

The explanation I have provided is realism, not cynicism. All that
the agreement with Iran means is that Washington has belatedly realized
that the concocted Iranian and Muslim threats are using up time, energy,
and resources that Washington needs to apply to Russia and China.
Moreover, there were too many threats for the American people to know
which was paramount.

One of the reasons that Greece has to be destroyed is to block the
entry of Russian natural gas into Europe from the Russian pipeline into
Turkey.

Washington has US troops in Ukraine training the Ukrainian military
how to subdue the break-away provinces, and the stooge Ukrainian
government has taken no steps to comply with the Minsk Agreement.
Clearly Washington intends that peace is not in the cards in
Ukrainian-Russian relations.

At some point Russia will have to accept defeat or else stop
contributing to its own defeat. On more than one occasion when the
Russian break-away provinces had the Ukrainian military totally
defeated, the Russian government intervened and prevented the collapse
of the Ukrainian military.

For its consideration, Russia has been
rewarded with more demonization and with US aid to the Ukrainian
military. When hostilities resume, which they will, Russia and the
break-away Russian provinces will find themselves in a worsened
position.

The Russian government cannot pursue peace when Washington is pursuing War.

~ Paul Craig Robertsis a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format. His latest book is How America Was Lost.